"By the way, what did you think of that memorandum of mine on Maxwell's
bill?"

George fidgeted and mumbled. Fontenoy, undaunted, began to harangue on
certain minutiae of factory law with a monotonous zest of voice and
gesture which seemed to Tressady nothing short of amazing.

He watched the speaker a minute or two through his half-shut eyes. So
this was his leader to be--the man who had made him member for Market
Malford.

Eight years before, when George Tressady had first entered Christchurch,
he had found that place of tempered learning alive with traditions on the
subject of "Dicky Fontenoy." And such traditions--good Heavens!
Subsequently, at most race-meetings, large and small, and at various
clubs, theatres, and places of public resort, the younger man had had his
opportunities of observing the elder, and had used them always with
relish, and sometimes with admiration. He himself had no desire to follow
in Fontenoy's footsteps. Other elements ruled in him, which drew him
other ways. But there was a magnificence about the impetuosity, or rather
the doggedness with which Fontenoy had plunged into the business of
ruining himself, which stirred the imagination. On the last occasion,
some three and a half years before this Market Malford election, when
Tressady had seen Fontenoy before starting himself on a long Eastern
tour, he had been conscious of a lively curiosity as to what might have
happened to "Dicky" by the time he came back again. The eldest sons of
peers do not generally come to the workhouse; but there are aristocratic
substitutes which, relatively, are not much less disagreeable; and George
hardly saw how they were to be escaped.